Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
Ashraf Al Shafaki has a blog called Egypt Farm.
He recently made a very interesting post about roasted watermelon seeds (that is if you can find a watermelon with seeds to roast anymore). He is interested in Egyptian heirloom fruits and vegetables.
The only example of an Egyptian heirloom I could think of was the Flat of Egypt beet (and only this after searching on the Internet).
Does anyone else have any ideas of Egyptian heirloom fruit and veg?
Here are my first few tomatoes and beans of the season.
The three brown tomatoes are brown berry. The yellow one is Blondkopfchen. The tiny red one is Matt’s Wild Cherry. All were grown in my greenhouse except Matt’s Wild Cherry, which is from my roof.
The beans are Dog bean. It’s a bush variety, which are usually a little earlier than pole beans. The Dog bean is a multi-purpose bean, good green as well as dried. This post has a picture of what the beans look like dry, and they are similar to kidney beans. Several other bloggers grew this bean before, or are growing it now: Rebsie, Ian and Gintoino. I’ve given the seeds to some other people too, so maybe they will post about it when they grow it too. The Dog bean is probably from Croatia, from the Dalmatian coast. This bean was selectively bread, then renamed, from a bean originally called the Dalmation bean and there was probably a misunderstanding over what the name really meant.
Update 7 July:
We had the dog beans for dinner last night, and they were really good! In part I’m sure because they were very fresh. The flavor was a very intense and delicious. The texture was also really nice, crispy and chewy. I don’t think we’ve tasted the green beans of this variety before.
Date and Location
These are now confirmed, and as follows:
20 September 2008, 9:30am – 5:30pm
Oxford Botanic Garden, High Street, Oxford
Coffee and Tea provided
Costs
I am not looking to make any profit on this, so I will total up the costs at the end and ask everyone to pay a portion of this according to the number of people who attend.
I expect this to be about £10-15 per person, including entrance fee to the garden.
An International Event
Kate from Hills and Plains Seedsavers will travel from Australia to be with us! I will come from Amsterdam.
Accommodation in Oxford
I expect most people attending will travel to and from their homes, but if you want to stay overnight in Oxford rooms are available at some of the colleges. I will be staying at Queen’s College, within walking distance of the Botanic Garden.
Limited Spaces Available
There are a very limited number of seats available. The room we have holds exactly 25 people, and there is simply no space for anyone else to stand to the side or to squeeze in one more chair. I hope to accommodate everyone who wants to attend, but may have to turn away some late comers. It’s very important you tell me if you decide later not to attend, otherwise your seat will be empty and someone else may miss the opportunity to come.
For anyone who has not already told me they want to attend, I’m afraid I won’t be able to confirm space until closer to the time. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are interested.
Are you expecting to come, but you don’t see a link to your blog below? Get in touch, it probably means I’ve forgotten about you.
Is there a link to your blog below, but you don’t plan to come? Let me know! Someone else wants your seat(s).
I will be sending emails in August to everyone confirming their attendance. If you will be away all or most of August, please let me know in advance so I can confirm this with you before you leave.
Picnic
Rain or shine we will have a picnic, so bring any food you want to share with others. Since most of us are gardeners, consider bringing something from your garden, but anything you want to bring is fine.
Also bring something to sit on, and anything else you want for the picnic.
Our room can be locked, so personal belongings can be left inside while we go outdoors.
In case of bad weather, we can eat indoors.
Seed Swap
Be sure to bring any seeds or other propagation materials you want to share with others. I will bring some seeds and other things from my garden.
The most interesting of course are seeds you have grown and saved yourself, but don’t be afraid to bring any seeds you think anyone else might be interested in.
You don’t need to bring seeds in order to receive them from others.
Speakers Needed!
At the moment we don’t have any speakers scheduled, except I plan to say a few words about what I’m growing in my garden. If you would like to talk about your garden or anything else, please let me know. Please let me know if you have other ideas about people we might invite, or just things you would like to hear about.
With or without speakers the event will go ahead. If necessary we will just chat with each other, or walk around the gardens, but it will be a lot more interesting if we can find some people to speak to us too.
Sunday
The main event is on Saturday, but I will be around Sunday as well. Are you interested in making informal plans on this day too? Let me know. Kate from Hills and Plains will be around Sunday too. I may visit some people’s gardens or allotments this day.
Other Get-Togethers
Ours is not the only blogger’s get together being planned! On August 24th in a number of places in Australia, France and the US there will be several blogging/food growing gardener get-togethers. Have a look on Ian’s blog for more details. If you are planning or know of other get-togethers, please leave a comment below and let people know about it.
MustardPlaster
Spade Work
Daughter of the Soil
The plot thickens
Vegmonkey and the Mrs.
Joanna’s Food
Growing Our Own
The smallest smallholding
A Blog Called Fuggles
Veg Plotting
Soilman’s Allotment Blog
My Tiny Plot
Manor Stables Veg Plot
Fluffius Muppetus
NomeGrown
Purple Podded Peas
A Nice Green Leaf
Hills and Plains
The FAO meeting is underway in Rome.
Jeremy of Agricultural Biodiversity is there, and I hope we hear something from him when he has time.
La Via Campesina is there, the international peasant farmer movement, and has already published pictures of farmers wishing to express their own view of the situation being forcibly expelled from the event.
You can download this and other videos and watch them directly on your computer.
It doesn’t look very promising so far, a lot like recent G8 meetings.
In my previous post I talked about organic seeds. Now I’m going to say some things about the term organic in general. In North America and most of the rest of the world organic is now a legally regulated term. In most cases it can only be used as part of a certification program. This certification program is very expensive, involves a lot of unnecessary paperwork and is designed to discourage farmers from saving and regrowing their own seeds. It’s time we as consumers learn to stop putting so much value into this term, and in fact we should really be a bit suspicious when it is used. The concept of organic is one we should embrace, but we should start getting used to other words being used to describe the concept.
Mike of Tiny Farm Blog recently posted about a new certification he is taking on, ‘Certified Natural’. In Europe the term ‘biological’ has the same meaning as organic, and is often used. Mike is considering giving up his organic certification.
The term Organic is increasingly becoming synonymous with factory farm and mass marketed products. While it does mean most pesticides and chemical fertilizers were not used, there are few guarantees anymore and it’s clear the system of certification hurts rather than helps small farmers. Certified organic products are certainly something to consider avoiding when not directly associated with a small farmer or if non-certified alternatives that were also produced without chemicals are also available.
